sufficiently large number to determine the prevalent usage; while with a smaller number an equally strong impulse is felt prompting to the use of the left hand, in defiance of all restraining influences. It is indeed always necessary to give full weight to the influences of education, the whole tendency of which, from early childhood, operates in one direction. The extent to which this is systematically employed to develop the use of the one hand at the expense of the other, is illustrated by the conventional rules for the use of the knife and fork. It is not sufficient that the knife shall be invariably held in the right hand. The child is taught to hold his knife in the right hand and his fork in the left when cutting his food; but when either the fork or spoon is used alone, it must forthwith be transferred to the right hand. All voluntary employment of the left hand in any independent action is discountenanced as awkwardness or gaucherie; and thus, with a large majority, especially among the more refined and conventional classes of society, it is rendered a comparatively useless member, employed at best merely to supplement the other. Reference has already been made to more or less definite allusions to an exceptional prevalence of left-handedness in the Punjab, and among the Sandwich Islanders, the Hottentots, and South African Bushmen; but they rest apparently on very partial and limited observations. So far as appears, it may be confidently assumed that left-handedness is little more prevalent among the rude and uncultured classes of society, or among savage than civilised races; as would certainly be the case if right-handedness mainly depended on an acquired habit. The Rev. George Brown, who has spent upwards of fourteen years as a missionary among the Polynesians, informs me that left-handedness is as rare among the natives of the Pacific Islands as with ourselves; while in all their languages the distinction is clearly indicated. Dr. Rae, whose own inveterate left-handedness was calculated to draw his attention to its manifestation among the Indians and Eskimos with whom he was brought into prolonged contact, only noticed such an amount of ambidextrous facility as is naturally developed in the paddler, the trapper, and lumberer, in the exigencies of forest and hunter life. A similar opinion was expressed to me by Paul Kane, whose wanderings as an artist among the tribes of British North America gave him exceptional facilities for observation; and this conclusion accords with the experience of members of the Canadian Geological Survey.